entertainmentdissected

Sandra Bullock gets to second base with Betty White in the No. 1 box office champ The Proposal. Here, White’s character, Grandma Annie, likens looking for Bullock’s breasts to an Easter Egg Hunt. (picture courtesy of Touchstone Pictures)

One of America’s favorite Golden Girls returned to the top of the domestic box office over the weekend.

No, not Sandra Bullock. Though the actress headlines The Proposal, her first No. 1 film at the box office in a decade, it’s Bullock’s co-star Betty White, who enjoyed time at No. 1 even more recently. As nosy bigot neighbor Mrs. Kline, she co-starred in 2003’s Steve Martin-Queen Latifah vehicle, Bringing Down the House, which earned more than $132 million in the USA and Canada.

The Proposal,which earned $33.6 million from play at 3,056 venues, stars Bullock and Ryan Reynolds as a boss and her assistant engaging in one of Hollywood’s oldest and most overused plots- a marriage of convenience, to help someone avoid deportation. Though the film has received mixed notices from critics (a 48 out of 100 Metacritic average, based on 29 reviews), White is winning rave notices as Reynolds’ Grandma Annie.

While the 87-year-old actress has enjoyed a vast television career (most notably, appearances on all Password incarnations, and Emmy-winning roles as The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s Sue Ann Nivens and The Golden Girls’ Rose Nylund), she only claims a handful of feature films to her credit. After making her film debut in 1962’s Advise and Consent, she did not have a scripted feature film role until 1998’s Hard Rain, opposite Christian Slater and  Morgan Freeman. What she was thinking playing herself in 1998’s Eddie Murphy dud Holy Man, we will never know, but it’s not like she has not stumbled on the small screen during her 60-year career (The Golden Palace? Maybe This Time, anyone?)

Aside from Bringing Down the House, which by far remains her most successful big-screen endeavor, White starred opposite Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer in 1999’s underwhelming The Story of Us. One of her most memorable film appearances came via 1999’s hit comedy/horror Lake Placid,where she portrayed seemingly sweet, yet acid-tongued keeper of the killer crocodile, Delores Bickerman.

Audiences apparently enjoy seeing White in roles that contrast her real-life sugar-and-spice, animal-loving persona. Off screen, they want her to remain (for the most part) the Grandma Next Door, but as of late, they adore the on-screen antithesis; the racier and more F-bomb-dropping, the better, the cuter.

White’s next project reportedly comes via the animated Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, set for release in August. However, no matter how her big-screen career has flourished during her 80’s, she forever will remain one of television’s greatest comic actresses. But thanks to her newfound screen success, she can enjoy the best of both worlds- not just TV and film, but also dual reputations of naughty and nice.

Just don’t let Rose Nylund hear the potty-mouthed language coming from White in recent times. After all, she’s the woman who, on Golden Girls, once told Dorothy that she could go to h-e-double-hockey-sticks.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS